News We Can Use

I have been so excited about today's appointment with the maternal and fetal specialist.  I've been praying that what we would get today would be clarity and we certainly have gotten that -- just not entirely what we were expecting.

I've learned that the technicians who perform sonograms are very chatty unless they encounter a problem and then they get pretty quiet.  After all, they're focusing on seeing everything they can with the problem and don't really want to say anything anyway -- they want the doctor to do the telling.

The baby boy (definitely, DEFINITELY another boy) looks good overall.  He's proportional, working kidneys, stomach, bladder.  Good head and brain "stuff" including a good nasal bone and no indications of cleft palatte or club foot or other markers that indicate a chromosomal abnormality -- particularly the nasty ones 13 and 18.

Except. 

He has a pretty significant heart defect.  And I say significant because it's not something that we can hope will correct itself and the best case scenario is surgery once he's born.  Worst case scenario is, well, fairly obvious.  The technical information is a little above me right now -- it's hard to absorb that stuff when you're trying to absorb the bald facts BUT I do know that all the chambers of the heart are there.  Some of them, particularly with the outflow of the blood, are not working right and there may be a hole somewhere because it appears that there's some bleed through so to speak.  We are having a free fetal DNA test done (non-invasive blood test) to determine if this is related to Down's Syndrome or if it's an independent heart problem but those results won't be back for about 2 weeks.  We're also going to see a pediatric cardiologist in about 2 weeks and have enough information to know that I will be delivering this baby at a hospital where they can whisk him away immediately if need be.

Ironically (because it took us 9 months to name William!) we have a name picked out for him and are willing to share now that it's quite positive he's a boy!  He'll be Aaron Andrew (the Andrew part after my dad) Whittacre and I can't wait to have him for however long we get to keep him whether he's easily fixed or not.  Needless to say he probably won't be our sports star so I guess we better start training William now to be the left-handed prodigy!  The girls already have too much of my innate "talent" to be athletic unfortunately.  We'll just all have to be known for our brains!

Good news is that my pregnancy and health shouldn't be impacted at all which is good because Blue Bell ice cream goes on super sale Saturday and it would have been a shame to miss out on that!  :)

In the meantime, we wait some more and keep praying.  I keep gradually feeling better and better and am starting to feel some movements!  Yay!  In fact, as much as he moved around for the ultrasound today we'll just keep our fingers crossed that he's 10 times worse when he's 2!!  Kind've makes me appreciate the ruffians I've got!